Category Archives: theology

Covid-19 Has Tippy-Toed Into My Life

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Yes, though twice-vaccinated two friends of mine are apparently inflicted with this loathsome illness; the gentleman of the couple is showing egregious symptoms and his partner is showing significant symptoms.  This gentleman has recently visited his daughter who is part of the anti-vax movement.  He has recently done work for us in the yard, more with myself than my wife.  He and I worked in close proximity and frequently handled the same tools.  I am scheduled for my Moderna booster show tomorrow but I am now on alert myself. I have a Bio-Max home testing kit which I will utilize this afternoon. We have curtailed some events and cancelled get-togethers with friends.   I had to venture into town this morning and made a point of adding rubber gloves to my face-mask diligence and plan to make fewer of these treks into town.

My “venture” into my lovely hometown of Taos, New Mexico helped me to appreciate the diligence that Taos and its citizens have demonstrated the past two years as this “beast” has presented itself.  My friends and townspeople I encounter readily accepted the Covid-19 protocol with a few exceptions here and there.  I do have two close friends however, both lovely souls with a keen sense for the spiritual, that have steadfastly refused this vaccination.
This Covid-19 experience has deepened my belief in God, for I see it as one of Her wake-up calls to my lovely country.  She initially slapped our face with Trump and his minions and we failed to listen to Her judgement; so, she followed with the double-whammy of Covid-19.  Yes, I here share my conviction that God is more than ideology, She is not a “thing” which we so readily fail to realize our thoughts are.  Here I will not humiliate this God I believe in with my theological and metaphysical palaver.  Now having the courage to appreciate that God is not “male or female”, I even have introduced the female pronoun to His/Her name!  I see, think, and feel that God is an incomprehensible Mystery that is woven into the very fabric of our being, some “thing” that is not a “thing” but a Presence that we can find in our life if the aforementioned “Divine Intervention” can be heeded.

“Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear”…Eventually!

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Hmm. Well, if it does I’ve got a lot of work to do for I have a lot of fears. But these fears are diminishing as I’m slowly beginning to accept God’s love, realizing that this love is a dimension of life that is not “out there” in some objectified projection from our collective and individual heart. God is immanent as well as transcendent.

But fear will never go away completely for it comes with being human. Those who are so proud of being totally fearless might take caution as this could be merely the brazen arrogance of psychopathy. To be is to be vulnerable. And to be fully human, or to be in the process of maturing as a human, is to be increasingly comfortable with the experience of vulnerability. And that is often scary!

I have tried most of my life to escape vulnerability…and human-ness…with ideologue-ism. It is a very dependable escape and when we opt for that “fig leaf” we will always have the affirmation from others who have subscribed to similar ideas. And, I can assure you that it is so comforting to know that one is in the comforting warmth of like-minded “believers” and to have that firm conviction that one’s view of the world is “right.” Coming to the point of maturity and seeing that this “escape from freedom” was a self-imposed prison has taken courage that I didn’t know that I had…and, I don’t really know that I have it even yet! But I see so clearly now the tyranny of ideas when not moderated by an open heart. I see now so clearly how the ideologue-ism of those days of my life included participation in a group effort to control others. And I see this same poison so vividly illustrated today in extremist groups such as ISIS and political factions in my country who seeks to deny rights to minorities, even the right to vote and the right to health care.

 

 

 

More on Ego-Ridden Faith

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Yesterday I addressed dualistic thinking and the “saved” vs “unsaved” emphasis of some religions, portraying that emphasis as merely an expression of an “us” vs “them” approach to life. This expression of faith is very guilt-ridden and must have very rigid boundaries and often appears to be searching daily to find things “that we don’t do that others do” which “make us good, and them bad.” Looking back on my life, I realize that my tenuous identity was explicitly based on this false premise and consisted of a relentless list of “thou shalt nots” which I religiously sought to adhere to to compensate for a deep-seated self-loathing. And even though I was a professing Christian, that approach to spirituality was intrinsically antithetical to the teachings of Christ who said that He accepted us “as is.”

Now, in this “second half of life” (to borrow a Richard Rohr term), I find that spirituality is letting down some of these rigid boundaries and acknowledging some of those unsavory impulses, a process that Karl Jung described as “embracing your shadow” or “withdrawing your projections.” For, as Jung also pointed out, “What you resist, persists” and is therefore created in your outside world. To illustrate, the notion of “saved” would not have any meaning, would not even exist, without its complement of “unsaved” much like “green” would have no meaning or existence without “un-green.”

But recognizing this spiritual subtlety is antithetical to the interest of the ego who, should it recognize this ambiguity, would have its authority in jeopardy. So usually when an ego-bound person encounters teachings like this, they will respond with something like, “Of the devil” or “straight from the pits of hell” or “damn New Age stuff.” Thus the ego continues merrily on its way, smug in its faith, not listening to Shakespeare who noted, “With devotions visage and pious action they sugar o’er the devil himself.”

Rumi Points Us to the Real!

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This beautiful poem by Rumi illustrates what I see as a central message of Jesus. In my own words, Jesus’ ministry can be summed up with, “Hey, you guys and gals, you got it all wrong! You are taking for real that which is only temporary.” This was most clearly emphasized when he said in Matthew 6, “ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. Earlier Plato had noted the same phenomena with his myth a man being chained in a cave in which he could only see the shadows of the world that was going on behind him outside the cave’s opening. He naturally took the shadows to be the real thing. I think it was C. S. Lewis who described this as “the sin of misplaced concreteness,” taking the ephemeral to be the real. Here, Rumi presents the notion with customary eloquence:

Thirst is angry with water. Hunger bitter
with bread.The cave wants nothing to do
with the sun. This is dumb, the self-
defeating way we’ve been. A gold mine
is calling us into its temple. Instead,
we bend and keep picking up rocks
from the ground. Every thing has a shine like gold,
but we should turn to the source!
The origin is what we truly are. I add a little
vinegar to the honey I give. The bite of scolding
makes ecstasy more familiar. But
look, fish, you’re already in the ocean:
just swimming there makes you friends
with glory. What are these grudges about?
You are Benjamin. Joseph has put a gold cup
in your grain sack and accused you of being
a thief. Now he draws you aside and says,
“You are my brother. I am a prayer. You’re
the amen.” We move in eternal regions, yet
worry about property here. This is the prayer
of each: You are the source of my life.
You separate essence from mud. You honor
my soul. You bring rivers from the
mountain springs. You brighten my eyes.
The wine you offer takes me out of myself
into the self we share. Doing that is religion.

 

“Say it Ain’t So, Buddha!”

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Buddha must be turning over in his grave this morning. The New York Times has a story about “radical Buddhism” in Myanmar (Burma) which reports re an anti-Muslim movement in the country spearheaded by Ashin Wirathu. To illustrate his extremism, he recently described a massacre of Muslim children in one city as a “show of strength,” declaring, “If we are weak, our land will become Muslim.”

Of course, I know enough about religious history to know that extremism finds its way into all spiritual teachings, Buddhism included. But this is the most flagrant example I remember in my life time of Buddhist extremism. And this current “flavor” is merely another rendition of a favorite theme of all small-minded people of any persuasion, “us vs. them” with “them” always being a catch-all category for people who we disagree with or do not like. We must always remember that when we are captivated by an ego need to categorize our world, we will inevitably find ourselves comfortably ensconced in the luxurious confines of “us” while someone else is always banished into “them.”

This is binary thinking, the spawn of ego-mindedness run amok. Instead of using Reason to find common ground, to search for inclusiveness, this gift is used to carve the world up into pieces and always leaves the “carver” in isolation. Or to look at it slightly differently, this “carver” is horrified by his own isolation and misuses the God-given Reason to perpetuate that isolation. As Goethe noted, “They call it Reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

 

Southern Baptists and “The Wisdom of Humility”

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Terry Mattingly reported re a recent discussion with leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention re decline in baptisms, reflecting a decline in “conversions.” I here provide a link to this article so you can see how the SBC is attempting to explain this decline. (http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/jun/14/terry-mattingly-baptists-with-fewer-baptisms/)

But, having been a Baptist myself, I have an opinion which I shared weeks ago after a newspaper article reported about a new demographic category, the “nones”, people who now selected “none” when asked about which religion they are affiliated with. (https://literarylew.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/an-open-letter-to-the-clergy-re-the-nones/)
I feel that Baptists err in that they adhere rigidly to the “letter of the law” even while preaching against this very thing. But by taking the Bible literally, they fail to see the nuances of the Scripture and fail to appreciate the layers of meaning that it offers. They fail in exercise of hermeneutic discipline.

I here would like to share a paragraph by a professor of religion in San Antonio, Glenn Hughes:

…there are those who try to hold on their sense of the divine by tenaciously attaching themselves to religion in a quite uncritical manner—in a closed-minded manner that renders the world of everyday responsibilities, and the awareness of historical complexities, more bearable though massive psychological reliance on intense, unexamined feelings evoked by religious symbols, rituals, and texts. Thus is forged an attitude of intransigent certainty that one is in possession of the sole and absolute truth about divinity. And thus the full complexity of the challenges of existential self-making and of responsibility for history is sidestepped, to some degree, by ignoring the problematic fact of the transcendence of divine transcendence—that is, its profound mysteriousness and its unavailability to direct or substantive human understanding—that the former child’s sense of the nearness of the divine absolute becomes transformed into an inflexible, dogmatic, and (as we all know) sometimes murderous conviction that the intense feelings evoked by one’s own religious tradition are infallible guides to absolute, exclusive religious truth.  (A More Beautiful Question:  The Spiritual in Poetry and Art)

If the Gospel is to be meaningful, it must be refracted through a heart in which meaning is present. By that, I mean a heart that is “petal open” and full of “penetrable stuff” (Shakespeare’s term) not one that’s keeping human frailty at bay with rigid, compensatory certainty. In other words, a heart that is humble. And, as T. S. Eliot noted, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. And humility is endless.”

Don’t Throw that Baby…!

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Beginning in adolescence, it is very typical for children to begin to rebel in the effort to achieve autonomy. This rebellion can come in simple forms like dying one’s hair purple, sneaking around and getting a tattoo, dating someone that parents disapprove of, and (of course) having sex. But, sometimes the need for autonomy is more fundamental and the adolescent tends to “throw the baby out with the bath water,” and reject everything his parents and community taught him. This rebellion also can serve a purpose but it is a more dangerous pathway as it can lead to severe behavioral and emotional problems as living “beyond the pale” of the cultural mandates one was offered can be very painful.

I was raised a conservative Christian in Arkansas, in the South of the United States. It was not until about the age 20 when I started my rebellion and it took me about 15 years to completely forego my fundamentalist Christian roots. But, fortunately I never threw “the baby out with the bathwater” and so, for example, never considered myself an atheist or even agnostic. And now I’m very glad as decades later I am discovering my Christian faith very meaningful and realize how that the roots of this faith are very instrumental in helping me find this meaning. Yes, I finally have the courage to interpret scripture and religious tradition for myself and can do so in a way in which they are “meaningful” to me. And, I have found…fortunately…that my approach to the matter is not isolated–many others approach the subject in a same fashion and I have even found me a community of faith in my community. This is important because there is danger when one interprets religion in such a fashion that he isolates himself, even if ensconced in a very isolating, sectarian, exclusivist group.  (This isolation reminds me of an old bromide, “He who lives by himself and for himself will be spoiled by the company he keeps!)

I’m going to share with you another blog from Richard Rohr which addresses this very issue of “throwing the baby out with the back wate”:

 

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All-or-nothing reformations and all-or-nothing revolutions are not true reformations or revolutions. Most history, however, has not known this until now. When a new insight is reached, we must not dismiss the previous era or previous century or previous church as totally wrong. It is never true! We cannot try to reform things in that way anymore.

 

This is also true in terms of the psyche. When we grow and we pass over into the second half of life; we do not need to throw out the traditions, laws, boundaries, and earlier practices. That is mere rebellion and is why so many revolutions and reformations backfired and kept people in the first half of life. It is false reform, failed revolution, and no-transformation. It is still dualistic thinking, which finally turns against its own group too.

 

So do not waste time hating mom and dad, hating the church, hating America, hating what has disappointed you. In fact, don’t hate anything. You become so upset with the dark side of things that you never discover how to put the dark and the light together, which is the heart of wisdom and love, and the trademark of a second half of life person.

 

 

Richard Rohr and the Ambivalence of Spirituality

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I am sharing on this occasion Richard Rohr‘s blog as I have done occasionally.  I will say as I usually do, I really should just shut up and post the link to Rohr’s blog on my blog each day.  He says everything I could ever want to say and more.  But, if I did that, then I wouldn’t have any fun in my life, would I?

Richard appreciates the literary nature of the Bible.  He sees it as a “story’ and therefore needing interpretation.  And, if you think about it, our own life and the life of humankind and of the universe itself is a “story” and it is the job of each generation to interpret this story…and various parts of it…and make it meaningful to the contemporary world.  Richard does an excellent job in this hermeneutic endeavor with the Christian story.

 

 

A Big Surprise Meditation 16 of 49

I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to the little ones. (Luke 10:21 and Matthew 11:25)

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it, and those who deem themselves “morally successful” are often the last to learn it.

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection (like God does), rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond any imperfection.

It becomes sort of obvious once you say it out loud. In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is often the greatest enemy of the good. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept; goodness is a beautiful human concept. We see this illusionary perfectionism in ideologues and zealots on both the left and the right of church and state. They refuse to get their hands dirty, think compromise or subtlety are dirty words, and end up creating much more “dirt” for the rest of us, while they remain totally “clean” and quite comfortable in their cleanliness.
Adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,
pp. xxii-xxiii

 

An Open Letter to the Clergy re the “Nones”

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Polls about religion have revealed a new category in religious affiliation in America. A recent poll said that 20 per cent of those polled now select the box “none”, up from 2% in the ‘50’s and 7% in the ‘70’s. (See http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-25/opinions/38008236_1_nones-protestants-agnostics)

Now, having “been there and done that”, I know how much of the religious establishment, especially the clergy, will respond. They have at their disposal a time-told, self-serving contrivance. It goes like this: They will shake their head… perhaps grimace…look very pious, and then lament, “See, the Bible said it would be like this in the last days, that mankind would forsake God and turn to their wicked ways. Satan’s enticements would prove too alluring and they would opt for mammon over God’s will.” Their constituents will respond in kind, taking great comfort in knowing that they are the ones who are true to the faith, that are holding on firmly to “the faith once delivered unto the saints.”

But, they should take the advice of Shakespeare and “lay not that flattering unction to your soul.” Why not consider the possibility that the “nones” are making a valid choice in voting with their feet that what mainline Christendom offers does not pass the smell test anymore. Here is my open letter to the clergy on this matter:

Dear clergy and religious establishment:

Perhaps it is merely that what you offer now is merely pap, some watered down version of spirituality which is designed mainly to make you and the rest of your club feel better about itself, to perpetuate your own individual and collective ego needs. Sure, you purvey a spiritual tradition which has a rich heritage and contains valuable truth, but you present it in an immature and selfish manner so that anyone looking on, having one eye and half-sense, can tell that it is all about you. For example, in some circles you passionately take pride in “preaching Christ and him crucified”, but to any astute onlooker you use those words and the rest of the gospel merely to work your crowd into frenzy, to reinforce their preconceptions about God, and allow them to walk away still stuck in their own moribund religiosity. You facilitate the fulfillment of the scripture about people “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

Some of your worship services appear to be a mere carnival and others like a funeral service. Some are so dull and boring I would just as soon go home and watch paint dry. This is because there is no life there though there is often a lot of frenzy and hysteria…or for those of another persuasion, refrigerator-cold tedium. But it is merely a show, described by The Bard in Julius Caesar, who noted that, “There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; But hollow men, like horses hot at hand, Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

So, you hear about the “nones” and once again you get all worked up about how awful the world is and once again you can whip your crowd into a frenzy. It is so exciting for them to know that “the world” is going to hell in a hand basket but YOU are holding forth for the truth, that the world is lost in darkness and will not hear the truth YOU offer. But, my dear friend, consider the possibility that YOU are the one lost in the darkness of a sterile pseudo-gospel and instead of offering life to your flock you are offering more darkness. For, remember the wisdom of W.H. Auden, “The divine and the demonic speak the very same language.”

Now, I have been cruel but I “would be cruel only to be kind.” The gospel you offer in such an immature and self-serving manner speaks of a Savior that covers you regardless! God’s grace covers us all, regardless of the paltry nature of our faith. And, whose faith is not paltry? But it is the Object of our faith that matters. But the sterile message you preach, that turns people into “nones”, has no life in it and repels anyone seeking spiritual sustenance. The people in your flock hunger for “soul food” to alleviate the pain of the stresses and strains of modern-day life, not the sterile pap, the “gospel-eze”, that you trot out each week. Spiritual hunger will not be sated with your canned Christian version of “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken) I fear many of you were described by a friend decades ago when he wrote, “You heroes of spiritual contraception who have long since despaired of rebirth.”

Bonhoeffer’s Mystical Faith Experience

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In yesterday’s blog I expressed concern about the need for external reference with one’s life, especially with one’s belief system. Faith is, in a sense, a very narcissistic enterprise and always runs the risk of being merely a gross narcissistic indulgence. That has been the case with my faith so much of my life. And now my faith is taking a radically different direction and that gives me pause lest I too suddenly find myself all alone, believing in isolation, subscribing to some “unique” belief system for which there is no external validation. That is why it is important that I come across other people in my community, in my reading, and on the blog-o-sphere who have walked a similar path of faith or are doing so now. Yesterday, I discovered this marvelous quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who so beautifully describes my faith. (http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com/):

A Reading from a letter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his friend Eberhard Bethge, written from Tegel Prison, dated 21, July, 1944

During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a human being, as Jesus was human — in contrast, shall we say, to John the Baptist. I don’t mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.

I remember a conversation that I had in America thirteen years ago with a young French pastor. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it. I suppose I wrote The Cost of Discipleship as the end of that path. Today I can see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by what I wrote.

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world — watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a human being and a Christian. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?

I am glad to have been able to learn this, and I know I’ve been able to do so only along the road that I’ve travelled. So I’m grateful for the past and present, and content with them. You may be surprised at such a personal letter; but for once I want to say this kind of thing, to whom should I say it?